Monday, July 6, 2009

Fibro Fog

The worst thing for me about fibromyalgia isn't the pain, that's a dull ache (when I have it) that I can deal with. No, its the fatigue and the "fibro fog". In general I'm a fairly intelligent person. I did pretty well in school and can hold my own in a conversation on a variety of topics. I'm also a trivia freak and love all kinds of random knowledge. But when the fibro fog/fatigue sets in I feel dumb as a box of rocks. It feels like my brain slows down and I can't process information, which is not fun at work, especially since I'm not sure how I'd explain it to my managers. "Sorry I seem like I'm sucking today, but I have fibromyalgia and its making me totally spaced out right now, if I could just go take a nap for about an hour I'll be ok". Yeah like that's ever going to happen. I just cannot focus on anything meaningful and if I didn't force myself, I'd probably just end up staring off into space for hours. Even as I write this I have to keep pushing myself to look back at the screen and finish the post. When this happens the best thing for me to do is take a nap, usually an hour, and my brain resets or something. However, we all know this won't fly at work, even though I feel like my brain is mush until I get some rest. I can't be helping anyone much in that state. It probably relates to not getting quality sleep, something about Alpha waves interrupting the deep Delta wave sleep, so I might have to try sleeping pills again. I've tried Ambien before and it worked well, but I don't want to get hooked on it and not be able to sleep without it. That wouldn't really be any better. Has anyone else figured out a good way to deal with this?